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New White House reports suggest diplomacy isn’t a four-letter word after all

Jake Sullivan has been reportedly talking to Russians for months, and the administration wants Zelensky to keep channels with Putin open.

Analysis | Europe

After denying for months that it would encourage Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, the Biden administration has begun pushing Kyiv to publicly signal that it’s open to talks, according to the Washington Post.

The goal of the effort, according to the Post’s sources, is to assuage growing fears in the West that Ukraine has abandoned any hope for negotiations with Russia, opting instead for a “total victory” strategy that some worry could drag on for years. Those concerns have increased in recent months as the war has helped push inflation in the United States and created the possibility of a gas shortage in Europe during the winter.

The sources denied that the administration’s intent is to get Kyiv to start talking with Moscow in the short term.

Meanwhile, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has held several secret meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy aides in recent months, according to the Wall Street Journal. These behind-the-scenes conversations have been aimed at reducing the chance of dangerous escalation in Ukraine and have not included talk of diplomacy to end the conflict, according to the Journal’s sources.

The pair of revelations come just two weeks after Democratic establishment figures attacked congressional progressives for signing on to a letter calling for greater diplomatic engagement with Russia. Though the letter’s signatories were forced to retract it under pressure, this weekend’s news suggests that the Biden administration may be more sympathetic to the progressives’ message than many influential figures in the Democratic Party have been.

The news also signals that President Joe Biden and his team are feeling the heat from the growing pro-diplomacy movement in the Global South, which has so far borne the brunt of the conflict’s impact on humanitarian aid, food security, and inflation.

U.S. officials continue to contend that they will not push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into talks, and “they believe that Zelensky would probably endorse negotiations and eventually accept concessions, as he suggested he would early in the war,” according to the Post.

When could those talks actually start? As soon as this winter, according to the Post: “They believe that Kyiv is attempting to lock in as many military gains as it can before winter sets in, when there might be a window for diplomacy.”


National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan (via Reuters)
Analysis | Europe
Trump ASEAN
Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump looks at Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., next to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim when posing for a family photo with leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 26, 2025. Vincent Thian/Pool via REUTERS

‘America First’ meets ‘ASEAN Way’ in Kuala Lumpur

Asia-Pacific

The 2025 ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Kuala Lumpur beginning today are set to be consequential multilateral gatherings — defining not only ASEAN’s internal cohesion but also the shape of U.S.–China relations in the Indo-Pacific.

President Donald Trump’s participation will be the first by a U.S. president in an ASEAN-led summit since 2022. President Biden skipped the last two such summits in 2023 and 2024, sending then-Vice President Harris instead.

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iran, china, russia
Top photo credit: Top image credit: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi shake hands as Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu looks on during their meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS

'Annulled'! Russia won't abide snapback sanctions on Iran

Middle East

“A raider attack on the U.N. Security Council.” This was the explosive accusation leveled by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov this week. His target was the U.N. Secretariat and Western powers, whom he blamed for what Russia sees as an illegitimate attempt to restore the nuclear-related international sanctions on Iran.

Beyond the fiery rhetoric, Ryabkov’s statement contained a message: Russia, he said, now considers all pre-2015 U.N. sanctions on Iran, snapped back by the European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) — the United Kingdom, France, Germany — “annulled.” Moscow will deepen its military-technical cooperation with Tehran accordingly, according to Ryabkov.

This is more than a diplomatic spat; it is the formal announcement of a split in international legal reality. The world’s major powers are now operating under two irreconcilable interpretations of international law. On one side, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany assert that the sanctions snapback mechanism of the JCPOA was legitimately triggered for Iran’s alleged violations. On the other, Iran, Russia, and China reject this as an illegitimate procedural act.

This schism was not inevitable, and its origin reveals a profound incongruence. The Western powers that most frequently appeal to the sanctity of the "rules-based international order" and international law have, in this instance, taken an action whose effects fundamentally undermine it. By pushing through a legal maneuver that a significant part of the Security Council considers illegitimate, they have ushered the world into a new and more dangerous state. The predictable, if imperfect, framework of universally recognized Security Council decisions is being replaced by a system where legal facts are determined by political interests espoused by competing power blocs.

This rupture followed a deliberate Western choice to reject compromises in a stand-off with Iran. While Iran was in a technical violation of the provisions of the JCPOA — by, notably, amassing a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (up to 60% as opposed to the 3.67% for a civilian use permissible under the JCPOA), there was a chance to avert the crisis. In the critical weeks leading to the snapback, Iran had signaled concessions in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Cairo, in terms of renewing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s inspectors.

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On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants
Top Photo Credit: (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants

Europe

While diplomats labored to produce the Dayton Accords in 1995, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry advised, “No agreement is better than a bad agreement.” Given that Washington’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are opposed to any outcome that might end the war in Ukraine, no agreement may be preferable. But for President Trump, there is no point in equating the illusion of peace in Ukraine with a meaningless ceasefire that settles nothing.

Today, Ukraine is mired in corruption, starting at the very highest levels of the administration in Kyiv. Sending $175 billion of borrowed money there "for however long it takes" has turned out to be worse than reckless. The U.S. national sovereign debt is surging to nearly $38 trillion and rising by $425 billion with each passing month. President Trump needs to turn his attention away from funding Joe Biden’s wars and instead focus on the faltering American economy.

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